moved quickly up stream. Another followed. Then it was
dark. And we had to pass the night, after all, tossing uneasily in the
rough water. Soon after dawn we started again. I went across to the
causeway, and watched the trackers at work--twenty each on two ropes,
hardly advancing a step in five minutes. Then the boat's head swung into
shore, the tension ceased; something had happened. I waited half an hour
or so. "Nothing doing," in the expressive American phrase. Then I went
back. We had sprung a leak, and my cabin was converted into a
swimming-bath. Another hour or so repairing this. Then the rope had to
be brought back and attached again. At last we started for the second
time, and in half an hour got safely through the hundred yards of racing
waters into the bank above. At ten I got my breakfast, and we started to
sail with a fair wind. It dropped. Rain came on. My crew (as always in
that conjuncture) put up their awning and struck work. So here we are at
1 P.M., in a heavy thunder-shower, a mile from the place we tried to
leave at six o'clock this morning. This is the ancient method of
travelling--four thousand years old, I suppose. It is very inconvenient!
Oh, yes--BUT!----

IV

PEKIN

Professor Giles tells us, no doubt truly, that the Chinese are not a
religious nation. No nation, I think, ever was, unless it be the
Indians. But religious impulses sweep over nations and pass away,
leaving deposits--rituals, priesthoods, and temples. Such an impulse
once swept over China, in the form of Buddhism; and I am now visiting
its deposit in the neighbourhood of Pekin. Scattered over the hills to
the west of the city are a number of monastery temples. Some are
deserted; some are let as villas to Europeans; some, like the one where
I am staying, have still their complement of monks--in this temple, I am
told, some three to four hundred. But neither here nor anywhere have I
seen anything that suggests vitality in the religion. I entered one of
the temples yesterday at dusk and watched the monks chanting and
processing round a shrine from which loomed in the shadow a gigantic
bronze-gold Buddha. They began to giggle like children at the entrance
of the foreigner and never took their eyes off us. Later, individual
monks came running round the shrines, beating a gong as though to call
the attention of the deity, and shouting a few words of perfunctory
praise or prayer. Irreverence more complete I have not seen even i